On the advice of Notagain yesterday, I looked up what “push processing” was and simply enough it means “develop it longer”, which is a developing technique that allows you to fix underexposed negatives in development. Well, OK then. I shot a couple test rolls on the Nikon at 100ISO (using 400ISO C-41 film expired 9-2001) and push-developed it and one of the rolls of wedding footage that was shot in the same camera at 300 ISO (same film) out to 20 minutes dev time from my original 16 minutes in the Caff-C bath. The underexposed roll turned out a lot better than any have so far, with a much larger range of tonality and a much clearer impression on the film itself. The surprise was that the second test roll that was properly exposed also came out with much richer tomes and a clearer impression on the film.
The above are from the underexposed wedding photo batch. Below are the properly exposed ones from the test roll:
These were shot either indoors with a flash (wow, flash looks much better in B&W on film than it does in color & digital) or outside in the sun. Getting much better! Perhaps I’ll try pushing out to 25 minutes and see if that brings out that last bit of “dark end” tonality that I’m missing still…
That looks fantastic, great subjects. Keep it coming! :D
Wow, those last few really pop, and the underexposed ones came out great!
Nice to see this process works. I’ve never used it. I like the softness of some of the photos. Brings out a nostalgic perspective that is like that of old glass plates and early film. I bet it would be great sepia toned.